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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was a B Movie actor who moved into politics, becoming Governor of California and from 1981 to 1989 President of the United States. Although many credit President Reagan with ending the Cold War and helping to defeat Communism, this conveniently ignores the efforts of decades of liberal presidents starting with John F. Kennedy, to isolate the Soviet Union and contain the spread of Communism. His actions in the Middle East and Latin America have been harshly criticized by significant portions of the United States population as well as by NGOs such as Amnesty International. Although truthful, this very article was deleted from Conservapedia because it was considered "trolling". Apparently it is a capital offense on Conservapedia to insult their great prophet, Ronald Reagan. Link to deleted CP article. Well even Reagan was more liberal than many of the sillier Conservatives today, http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/06/08/would-ronald-reagan-be-too-liberal-for-gop-today/ Policy in Latin America During his term in office, Reagan funded an anti-communist but still brutal regime in El Salvador. His justification for this was that it would be even worse if a communist regime were to take power. During this time he also funded an insurgence in Nicaragua. Although the Sandinistas, who were the ruling party in Nicaragua, were corrupt and did engage in some human rights violations, the counter-revolutionaries that Reagan funded were even more brutal. The Contras have been accused by reliable sources such as Amnesty International of gross violations of human rights. The violations were so bad that even the normally conservative Catholic Church was somewhat supportive of the socialist Sandinistas. The Contras regularly destroyed social projects initiated by the Sandinistas including schools, hospitals, and agricultural collectives. Policy in the Middle East Support for Bin Laden Both the Reagan and Carter administrations supported Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahideen (which would later become Al Qaeda and the Taliban). The reason for this was because bin Laden was fighting the Soviets who were our enemies at the time. The fact that bin Laden was a radical Islamic extremist did not deter either Reagan or Carter from supporting him. Support for Saddam Hussein In addition to supporting bin Laden, Reagan also supported Saddam Hussein. The reason for this was because America was a bitter enemy of Iran, and had been since a theocratic regime took over in 1979. Despite being a brutal tyrant, Saddam was secular and was at war with Iran. This made him an attractive ally to the United States. Also, America would have access to Iraq's large oil reserves. This support continued even after it became known that Hussein was using chemical weapons against both Iranian forces and segments of the Iraqi population. Nuclear Weapons Ronald Reagan spent vast sums of taxpayers money on various schemes to end the deadlock of Mutually Assured Destruction and move to a scenario where the United States might be able to launch a sneak Pearl Harbor style surprise attack and "win" a nuclear war. Though winning a war that leaves tens of millions of casualties on your own side and some of your allies completely devastated is a strange concept of winning. He tried to do this by: #Star Wars style weapons to destroy long range missiles being fired at the United States - so if they had worked perfectly the US could have fought a war where the Soviets could only incinerate US allies who were within range of their short and medium range missiles. #First Strike weapons - Nuclear missiles sufficiently accurate they could destroy Soviet weaponry before it could be fired. #Stealth weaponry - weapons that could reach Soviet nuclear sites without detection. Needless to say this was a highly risky and deeply unethical strategy, a betrayal of the US allies whose populations would have been killed by this, Europeans were scared by this and anti-nuclear movements grew. Reagan was also deeply ignorant of the lessons of history - if you make it clear to an enemy that you are preparing to attack them with overwhelming force that you are starting to build, don't be surprised if they attack before you are ready to attack them. Ronald Reagan is the only person with control of a nuclear weapon system to have publicly joked about using it. See also *Iran-Contra Affair Category:Neo-Liberals Category:US Politics Category:Things Liberals hate Category:Conservatives Category:Conservative Tactics Category:Conservative Deceit Category:Conservative propagandists Category:Generally unpleasant people you wouldn't want to meet at dinner